SAMPLE LITERATURE ASSIGNMENT #1

Elizabeth A. Boyle
boyle30@purdue.edu

“the end” assignment

overview:
Throughout this semester, we’ve spent considerable time with works that are well-known in the
American literary canon. We’ve discussed each story’s historical context, literary appeals, generic
membership, and the ways the interactions between these components respond to prevailing notions
of what it means to be an American in the historical moments that inspired each of these stories.
For this project, you will select one of the texts we’ve read this semester and rewrite its ending; then,
you will write a brief reflection explaining your rhetorical and creative choices.

details:
In completing the first part of this assignment, which should be 2-3 pages in length, you might
change the story’s point of view, its historical or geographic local, its tone, the relationship between
characters, its use of dialogue, or the genre to which it belongs. Alternatively, you might instead
choose to alter the concluding events altogether by saving a character who dies in the original (or
vice versa), awarding financial success to a character who experiences poverty at the end of the
original (or vice versa), or something else entirely. The choice is entirely your own. However, you
must be able to explain and support the changes you made. As a word of caution, I advise you to
select one major change rather than multiple smaller ones; this will make it easier to trace the
alternate ending’s impact on the story’s social, cultural, and political commentary.

Then, you will write a brief, 3-5-page reflection comparing the creative choices you made when
writing your alternate ending to the rhetorical techniques the story’s original author uses. This
reflective response should discuss not only what changes you made and why you made them, but how
these changes affect the overall meaning of the text. Your reflection can draw on interpretations
assembled from class discussion, outside research, or your own analysis of the original stories. In
either case, you should talk about the relationship between form, content, and meaning through the
ways your revisions might alter readers’ interpretations of the rest of the story. Make sure you cite
specific instances in the original and rewritten texts that support this analysis.

a note about formatting:

Before you submit, please print and stable both parts of this assignment together (with the alternate
ending at the front). Make sure you use Times New Roman or Ariel, 12pt. font with 1” margins and
double spacing. You should also include a standard MLA heading and in-text citations in your
reflection essay.

This essay is due on the following date: